A major revolution in thinking
about religion is called for in this challenging work by theologian and
religious philosopher John Hick. The author persuasively argues for a
true religious pluralism, respectful of the non-Christian traditions
that have persisted over time—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

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* * * *

Belief and Interfaith Dialogue

By John Hick

Whether Marxism is to be accounted a religion
is a matter of definition. Personally I prefer a definition of
“religion” which involves an essential reference to the
Transcendent and which consequently does not include Marxism.
Nevertheless, Marxism borders on the religions in that it is a
systematic interpretation of human existence which issues in a
distinctive way of life; and as such it constitutes one of the
most powerful options among the world’s living religions and
ideologies.

And when a Marxist engages in dialogue with
people of other faiths than his own he does so from within his
own conviction that Marxism teaches the truth about man and his
history, including the truth that man’s religions are
projections of human hope, whose historic function has been to
enable the exploited masses to bear their servitude patiently
rather than rise up against their oppressors. And it must be his
hope that through his proclamation of Marxist truth his hearers
will be converted and enlisted among the forces of progress. . .
.

The origins of the scientific revolution of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lie in the many-sided
awakening of the European mind from its dogmatic slumbers in the
period which is comprehensively called the Renaissance. This was
a renaissance of the ancient Greco-Roman civilization, whose
literature was spread throughout Europe by the new technique of
printing. Science was thus a product of an interaction of
cultures.

For the rationalistic and enquiring spirit of
Greek philosophy seems to have been the main new fertilizing
agent which stimulated the rise of modern science in Christian
Europe, bringing its medieval phase to an end. And since its own
increasing momentum, rapidly establishing its independence from
the Christian world view, and indeed continually challenging the
Christian faith and forcing it to undergo major transformation
in order to remain credible in the light of growing empirical
knowledge.

Thus we may say that Christianity provided,
unconsciously, an intellectual soil in which the Greek spirit of
unimpeded rational inquiry could blossom into the modern
scientific outlook, and that this has now in turn largely
transformed the intellectual content of Christianity into a
faith which does not contradict the findings of the sciences. .
. .

One of the major questions put to the
Marxists and Maoists in their dialogue with the religions will
concern individual human freedom. The religions will have
increasingly to recognize a considerable element of truth in the
Marxist analysis of the economic dynamics of human society., and
a common aim with Marxism in the ideal of a classless society in
which men no longer exploit one another.

Indeed the moral basis for the criticism both
of the Hindu caste system and of polygamy and the traditional
subordination of women is most clearly articulated in Marxism.
For Marxism embodies in its pure form the mentality produced by
the scientific revolution. Marxism is modernity without
religion, in contrast to much of contemporary Christianity,
which is modernity in a religious form.

But the Marxist societies have to face the
question whether, in their opposition to capitalist-Christian
civilization, they have not themselves become hierarchical and
authoritarian, thus negating the concept of human liberation on
which they are based. For there are clearly as many features of
Marxist as of Christian, Muslim, and Hindu societies which
contradict the modern ideal of human equality and freedom. . . .

Source: Excerpt from John
Hick. God Has Many Names. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982.

John
Hick is one
of the world's foremost theologians and philosophers of
religion: his books feature on many comparative religion and
philosophy courses and his theories and work in the field of
race relations have earned him international acclaim. In this
warm-hearted account, he tells his life story, from his
schoolboy days in Yorkshire, through his conversion to
evangelical fundamentalism, to his renunciation of this to
become a staunch advocate of religious pluralism.

Gayraud
Stephen Wilmore—writer, historian, educator
and theologian—was born on December 20, 1921
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother was a
domestic worker and his father, a World War I
veteran, was an office clerk. His parents were
active in the community where he grew up, and his
father founded the first Black American Legion Post
in Pennsylvania. . . . Wilmore has written and
edited sixteen books including Black Religion and
Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious
History of African Americans, which was published in
1998, and Pragmatic Spirituality, which was
published in June 2004. He is also the recipient of
innumerable awards and honors. . . . From 1959 to
1963, Wilmore was an assistant professor of social
ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. From
there, he served as the executive director of the
United Presbyterian Commission on Religion and Race
until 1972. In that position, he helped to organize
and train ministers who participated in boycotts and
protests in the South during the Civil Rights
movement. From 1972-1974, he taught Social Ethics at
Boston University School of Theology, and then
taught Black church studies at Colgate Rochester
Divinity School until 1983. Wilmore served as the
dean of the divinity program at New York Theological
Seminary until 1987
before becoming a teacher of church history at the
Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
In 1990, he became the editor of The Journal of
the ITC, and he remained in that post for five
years. From 1995 to 1998, Wilmore was an adjunct
professor at the United Theological Seminary in
Dayton, Ohio. Wilmore has written and edited sixteen
books including
Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An
Interpretation of the Religious History of African
Americans, which was published in 1998, and
Pragmatic Spirituality.—Historymakers

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* *

C. Eric
Lincoln, Race Scholar Is Dead at 75

—Eric
V. Copage—C. Eric Lincoln, author of several of
the most important scholarly works on the
religious experience of black Americans, died on
Sunday at his home in Durham, N.C. He was 75. He
had been suffering from high blood pressure,
diabetes, and heart trouble, his family said.
Dr. Lincoln wrote The Black
Muslims in America, the first scholarly examination of
the movement, and was a co-author of
The Black Church in the African-American Experience, a landmark
study of the political and social influence of
religious institutions in black America.

Dr. Lincoln,
professor emeritus of religion and culture at Duke
University in Durham, N.C., where he taught from
1976 to 1993, wrote or edited more than 20 other
books, including The Avenue, Clayton City, a novel
published in 1988, for which he won the Lillian
Smith Book Award for Best Southern Fiction, and a
series of books in the 1970's called the C. Eric
Lincoln Series in Black Religion. An ordained United
Methodist minister, his friendships and expertise
were truly ecumenical. He was a friend of the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Alex
Haley, and in 1990 was cited by Pope John Paul II
for ''scholarly service to the church.''

Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy."

Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly